Meatless Monday: Pumpkin mac and cheese

This autumnal pasta is creamy and rich thanks to the roasted squash, a little unctuous thanks to the cooked onions, and gloriously herby thanks to the fresh sage.

Take me to the recipe!

This mac and cheese is warming, cheesy, and chock full of veggies. It also works as dinner or lunch (or both!). I’ve made this with some sausage on the side for an even heartier meal, but it’s very filling on its own.

A couple of notes:
- I use half roasted squash and half pumpkin (butternut or acorn squash is my favorite, but you could use kobocha or delicata) because I don’t always love straight pumpkin pasta sauces. There is something heavy and somehow both flavorless and overwhelming about a sauce made with just pumpkin.
- The most time consuming part of this recipe is cooking the onions. A longer, slower cook yields much better flavor that significantly improves the final dish. I recommend taking the time.
- This recipe makes twice as much sauce as you need for a pound of pasta. You can either freeze half, or make two boxes of pasta for a large family. We’ve found that using 1 box of pasta and freezing half of the sauce yields one dinner for the four of us and some leftovers for lunch the next day.

Pumpkin mac and cheese

Time: 45 minutes, mostly active
Yield: 4 adult-sized dinner servings, 6 kid-sized dinner servings, or more if you’re serving this for lunch

2 Tbsp olive oil, butter, ghee, or your fat of choice
1 large onion, sliced thinly
2 large cloves garlic, diced
10 large sage leaves, minced
2/3 cup pumpkin puree
1 cup squash, roasted
½ tsp kosher salt
1/2 cup milk, or more, to create desired consistency
½ cup gruyere, shredded
½ cup cheddar cheese, shredded
¼ cup grated parmesan
1 lb pasta
1/2 cup reserved pasta water

Preheat the oven to 425. Cut your squash in half lengthwise and place cut side down on a parchment-covered baking sheet. Bake until fork tender, about 20-30 minutes.  

Bring a large stock pot of salted water to a boil. Cook your pasta according to package directions (towards the end of cooking your onions). Reserve 1/2 cup of pasta cooking water.

Heat a large sauté pan with the cooking oil over medium heat. Turn the heat down slightly and add the thinly sliced onions. Cook, stirring often, until caramelized, about 25- 30 minutes.

Add the garlic and sage to the pan with the onions and cook until fragrant, about 2-3 minutes. Remove from the heat.

In a blender or food processor, combine the cooked onions, garlic, sage, squash, pumpkin, salt, and cheese. Blend on high. Slowly add the milk until you’ve reached your desired consistency.* Scrape down the sides as needed.

Pour about 1/2 of the sauce into a large container for another time.

Drain your pasta, but reserve ½ cup of the pasta water. Put the pasta back into the pasta pot, top with ½ of the sauce, and thin out as needed with the reserved pasta water. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper as needed.

*The amount of milk you’ll need depends largely on your squash. Some squash have more water in them, so you’ll need less milk. Start with ¼ cup and add more as needed.

Delicata squash boats!

It's Whole 30 time again, folks. Between the move and my health, I've been feeling unmoored and eating with an abandon that has left me sluggish, foggy, and out of control.

So, I'll be posting some non-Whole 30 recipes that are already in my queue and that we make for Max, but will also be focusing on Whole-30 compliant recipes, especially over on Instagram.

In the mean time, these squash boats are so so good. I made a 1/2 batch for this post and have been eating the plain roasted delicata squash with everything. As I write this, I'm feasting on 1/4 of a squash filled with homemade turkey sausage and topped with a runny egg.

Delicata is the sort-of-lazy man's squash. It's not totally without prep as you have to cut it in half and clean out the seeds in the middle. But there's no peeling, because the peel is edible, which erases the most aggravating thing about squash for me.

Anyway, the non-Whole 30 version of these are a huge hit with the toddler. While, obviously, the cheese, milk, and bread play a big role, the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. The bread and nutty cheese are a nice salty, crunchy counterpoint to the sweet, soft squash while the eggs and milk add richness and the kale adds a little green as well. 

Delicata squash boats

2 large delicata squash, washed, ends trimmed, and cut in half with seeds scooped out
2 eggs
1 cup whole milk
¼ cup grated parmesan
4 large sage leaves, minced (or ½ tsp of dried sage)
4 oz stale bread cubes
1 cup finely chopped kale
4 oz cooked sausage
2 oz gruyere

Preheat the oven to 400. While the oven is heating, clean the squash by cutting each log in half, scooping out the seeds and pulp in the center, and placing cut-side down on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

In a large bowl, combine the eggs and milk and whisk lightly to combine. Add the bread cubes and stir to dampen all of the bread. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir until combined and nothing is dry. Set aside.

Roast the squash for 15 minutes, or until a fork can just pierce the outside of the squash (the squash will continue to cook, so don’t look for full fork tenderness and you don’t want overdone squash because it could fall apart). 

Remove from the oven and carefully flip over being mindful of the steam. Scoop equal amounts of filling into the centers. Top with grated gruyere and place back in the oven for 10 minutes or until the cheese is brown and melted.

Yield: 4 dinner-sized servings for adults (M usually eats about ½ of a squash)